Video: Creating and slicing multiple-sized banner images

Now the first set of graphics we're going to create are going to be the three different banner sizes. So let's come back to the exercise files. Let's open up folder 3, and let's open up banner-artwork.psd. Now, if you take a look in the Layers panel, on this file you'll see that we have three different Smart Objects here. Each Smart Object is clip grouped into a black square. So to see what the clipping group does, I'll select the middle one here, come up to the Layer menu, choose Release Clipping Mask, and then you'll see the original photograph here not clipped inside of the black box that you can see in the background.

Discover how to make your website more readable and efficient across various screen sizes and devices. Join author Chris Converse as he shares his own specialized techniques for creating a responsive site. The course takes the site from start-to-finish, from comping your ideas in Photoshop, to setting up the HTML page and containers, to styling established elements for small, medium, and large screens. In particular, Chris shows how to load images with CSS, reposition the nav bar for better viewing on mobile devices, and how to make the download time faster for small screens by providing multiple versions of your banner graphic and other images. Plus, learn how to replace graphics with high-resolution versions for Retina displays using CSS media queries.

This course was created and produced by Chris Converse. lynda.com is honored to host this training in our library.

Creating and slicing multiple-sized banner images

Now the first set of graphics we're going to create are going to be the three different banner sizes. So let's come back to the exercise files. Let's open up folder 3, and let's open up banner-artwork.psd. Now, if you take a look in the Layers panel, on this file you'll see that we have three different Smart Objects here. Each Smart Object is clip grouped into a black square. So to see what the clipping group does, I'll select the middle one here, come up to the Layer menu, choose Release Clipping Mask, and then you'll see the original photograph here not clipped inside of the black box that you can see in the background.

So this gives us a really nice way to non-destructively crop our images. So let's come back and re-enable that clipping mask. And if I move the photograph around while it's clipped, you'll see that the photograph will remain inside of that black box area. So the black boxes I created on those individual layers match the sizes of the graphics we want to have in our final project. Now, if you want to modify the artwork inside of the banners, double-click on one of these Smart Objects and Photoshop will bring up the original graphic inside of that Smart Object.

So here we can see the original graphic here. I'm going to come in here and just make a change. I'll just invert the image. Once the image is inverted, I'll come up here and choose File > Save, and then notice that every instance of the Smart Object on the background canvas will update based on the changes I make here. So I'm going to undo that change, hit Save. So inside of here you can copy and paste your own artwork and then again customize the banners with whatever content you want. Once that's complete, what we're going to do next is create slices on here so that we can save out individual graphics from this one single Photoshop canvas.

So let's come over to the Cropping tool. Let's click and hold, and let's come down and select the Slicing tool. So the Slicing tool allows us to click and drag an area on this canvas that can be saved out as a separate graphic from the overall Photoshop file. So let's bring our cursor to the upper left-hand corner of the larger banner. Let's click and drag and draw out a slice. Now, the tool will be a little sticky so it should stick to the actual black box underneath. Once we've drawn the slice, let's double- click and bring up the slice properties.

So inside here we can give our slice a name and make sure of the dimensions as well. So for the name let's call this banner_large. Let's come down here and make sure that this is set to 980 pixels wide by 275 pixels tall, then click OK. Back in our canvas, let's draw a slice for the medium size. Once the slice is drawn, double-click. We'll call this banner_medium and make sure this is set to 800 by 200 pixels. Let's choose OK.

Let's come down and draw one final slice for the small banner, double-click. We'll call this banner_small, and this should be set to 500 x 75. So this kind of stuck to 74 so I can just type in 75 and click OK here. Now that we've got our slices drawn, let's come up to the File menu. Let's choose Save for Web & Devices. If you're using Photoshop CS6, this menu will simply say Save for Web. This is going to bring up a large dialog box where we can pick individual slices and pick compression settings and file formats for each of our slices.

So in this main area here I'm just going to zoom out a little bit so we can see all three slices. So I'm going to select the top slice here, and on the upper left-hand corner here I can see I'm on my Slice tool. With this slice selected in the right-hand side, I can pick the file format, so I can choose GIF, JPEG, two different PNG files, or a Windows bitmap, and I can choose the quality over here. So for this one we're going to come in here and make sure we have JPEG set. And for the Quality since this is the large size on computers, what we're going to do is set that to 80% quality.

Now, in the lower left-hand corner Photoshop will show me exactly how big this file is going to be when we save this out. So this particular JPEG is going to be 150.8 kilobytes. Let's come into the canvas area and select the medium banner. We're going to make sure this is set to JPEG as well, and in here we're going to set the Quality down to 50%. We're probably on a tablet device for this particular size, and tablet devices have a much higher pixel density on their screens, so we can get away with compressing this a little bit more.

And this is going to be only 41 kilobytes if we look down in the file size. Next, we'll come into the main canvas, select the smallest banner. Set that to a JPEG file. These are going to be used mostly on phones, which again have a higher pixel density and much smaller screens as well, so we can get away with even more file compression here. So let's set this down to 30%. That's going to give us a 7.3 kilobyte file size. And once we're done here, we're going to come down and click Save.

This next dialog wants to know where to save the files and which particular slices. So let's start at the bottom. Under Slices, let's come down here and choose All User Slices. This tells Photoshop only the slices that you've actually drawn are the ones we want to save. And up in the file structure let's come in and pick myWebsite, and let's pick the images directory, and then we'll hit Save. Now, we already have the graphics in there because we added them at the beginning of the course, but if you've made changes or any customizations, we want to replace those individual graphics.

So we'll come over here, click Replace, and have Photoshop overwrite the graphics we added with the new ones we just created. Now, at this point, let's choose File > Save. All of your slices are actually saved with this Photoshop file, so we can always go back, make additional changes, and just do a Save for Web and update your slices as many times as you want. And now I'll close this file. Next we'll create the remaining artwork for the rest of the elements in our design.

Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about Creating a Responsive Web Design .

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Q: This course was updated on 12/12/2013. What
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A: There is a brand new chapter, "Supporting
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Q: This course was updated on 02/18/2015. What changed?

A: In this update the author covers adding CSS rules to optimize your webpage for printing, in a new chapter called "Creating Markup and Styles for Print."

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